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Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

Originally Posted by jmgi

Whats the method to getting nicely drawn comb honey done quickly before the bees track it up? John

A good honey flow. Plus fine your best hive to do your finishing. We use the best hives to do 60% of the capping. When the supers are full we stack them all on top of our best hives and they cap them within the week and then pull them so they don't track them up.

Making comb honey is an art on a good year, and is almost impossible in the bad year.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

I reported an observation in another thread that is more relevant here.

Comb honey made with foundation has a thick center wall with thin sidewalls. "Natural Comb Honey" has all thin cell walls. The center wall is the same thickness as the sides. There is a difference when the two are compared one bite from each. The thin-walled comb has a more delicate taste, whereas the thick-walled is more chewy.

Whether this makes any difference in marketability is questionable though, since both look the same in a package, and consumers are not aware of the difference in taste. Might win a county fair prize though!

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

I don't produce near as much comb honey as Mike Palmer, and like Mike i sell comb honey to other beekeepers to meet their customer demaned, i also sell it at the farmers market.Like mike i don't go along with the contaminated foundation part,i use a thin strip of the thin foundation for a starter on my comb honey frames and the bees fill in the rest (pure comb?) Using the thin foundation for a starter, i've not seen or heard of it having a thick center. Jack

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

Originally Posted by Michael Palmer

Sorry, I don't buy into the contaminated foundation bit.

You don't buy into it meaning you don't believe commercial wax has any chemical residue in it? What do you base this on? Studies have shown with out doubt that wax is a great compound for holding nasties. When it comes to people actually putting it in their mouth and either chewing it or eating it, it gives me pause for concern.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

What are the characteristics to look for in a hive to produce good comb honey? Is it the way they cap it or how fast they cap it, like to be crowded? I really don't buy into the contamination factor either, especially for thin foundation. The bulk of the comb will be what's drawn by the bees and your comb is only as clean as your bees are. If they're loaded up with pesticides, guess what, so is all that brand new wax they're laying out.

Twenty-one wax samples from six different commercial and two private foundation sources were uniformly contaminated with up to 10.1 ppm fluvalinate (mean of 2±0.6 ppm) and up to 14.3 ppm coumaphos (mean of 3.3±1.0 ppm, Table 5), which is 27% and 100%, respectively, of mean detection levels found in comb wax overall (Table 1). One organic beekeeper source lacked coumaphos in its foundation, although 0.5 ppm of fluvalinate was still present. Much lower levels of 25 other pesticides and metabolites were found in 21 samples, at an average of 5.7 detections per sample, which is lower than the 8 detections per sample of comb wax overall. Systemics were found less often in foundation (5.8% of detections, Table 5) than in comb wax (Table 1). Other frequently detected contaminants include chlorpyrifos (81%), endosulfan (38%), chlorothalonil (29%) and other pyrethroids including cypermethrin, cyfluthrin and esfenvalerate (Table 5). Interestingly, three distinct old foundation samples from prior to miticide use lacked fluvalinate and coumaphos as expected, but contained more chlorpyrifos and significant levels of other pesticides no longer registered including bendiocarb, p,p'-DDE, and heptachlor (not shown).

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

Originally Posted by JRG13

Where's all the Round-up that's killing bees ...

I'm no fan of Monsanto, but Roundup (glyphosate) and its generic offspring are herbicides, and generally not harmful to bees or other insects (unless they drown in a puddle of it). I use glyphosate in an appropriate manner, and find it a useful tool.

Here's my post from an earlier thread:
In the document linked below, published by North Carolina State University,

GROUP 3 — RELATIVELY NON-TOXIC. These pesticides can be used around bees with a minimum risk of injury.
...
Glyphosate
...

The .PDF doesn't cut-n-paste well here, so use the link if you don't like my crude attempt.

The biggest problem with glysophate is that it generally has a surfactant as a small part of the mix. Surfactants are essentially detergents, and will kill bees if they get sprayed directly with enough of it.

The other problem with Roundup is "image". It was developed by Monsanto, so it is branded as part of the Evil Empire. Howewer, Monsanto's patents have expired, so today many manufacturers make generic equivalents.

IV. ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS
Toxicological investigations conducted with bobwhite quail, mallard ducks, honey bees, rainbow trout, bluegills, and other species of fish show that these species have an extremely high tolerance to glyphosate.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

Hi Rader,

I was just being funny. I know glyphosate is an herbicide and should not be toxic to bees. Yep, China makes the glyphosate for cheap these days. A lot of the surfactants are designed to appease the general public as well and can be fairly harsh. People want to see yellowing and burnt leaves shortly after they spray so the surfactants are designed to burn the plants to some extent so there's the perception of hey, it's really working quickly. Glyphosate is deactivated quickly by binding to any organic compounds so tolerance is high is most species, but it's also why you need good clean water when using it.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

JRG13, sorry for misinterpreting your humor. The subject of Roundup touches a nerve in some people, and then sometimes all sorts of crazy things get said. Using smilies is sometimes helpful to indicate you are just having fun.

As far as seeing an impact (dead leaves) from glyphosate shortly after spraying, I understand completely. But perception is not always reality.

This paragraph is not directed to JRG13, but everyone who uses Roundup (glysophate). The best way to use glyphosate, is to kill the roots along with the tops of the plants. But it takes time for the active ingredient to travel down to the roots in order to kill them. That means that for people who use higher than the recommended dosages, the tops of the plants wither and brown quickly, but the roots are not affected because the herbicide has not had time to get to the roots. So the plant just resprouts, and people are unhappy. You really need to restrain yourself from applying overdoses, so that the top of the plant will live long enough to deliver a lethal dose to the roots. Otherwise you are just wasting your time and money.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

Are there any published studies that compare honey yields in hives drawing new comb vs. hives supplied with drawn comb?

Since the comb builders tend to be a different age than the foragers, apart from a very brief delay while the very first comb is built, I wonder if drawing comb really does have any significant effect on honey yields.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

Originally Posted by Barry

You don't buy into it meaning you don't believe commercial wax has any chemical residue in it? What do you base this on? Studies have shown with out doubt that wax is a great compound for holding nasties. When it comes to people actually putting it in their mouth and either chewing it or eating it, it gives me pause for concern.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

I've been letting the bees make it in jars.cut a piece of 1/2" plywood to fit a super,mount to bottom of old super,drill 9 holes 3 1/2",put 1/2 pint widemouth jars in holes&let the bees do the rest.sell as totally raw.$10 a jar.

Re: Making "Comb Honey" Good or Bad..

By putting a one or two in. starter strip of thin foundation on a comb honey frame and the bees draw the rest to fill the frame with new comb,would that not make 3/4 or 2/3 of none contaminated comb? Then again there are those who say that there are chemical residue in most everything the bees collect? Like DDT,for one, that i've read can stay in the ground for 50 yrs.? I'm not saying that commercial wax foundation does not have chemical residues in it, my thinking is, if a bee digusted it and brought it back to the hive to be processed by other bees and cured out without killing the bee, then it's probably not going to kill me. Not to be argumentative, but most everything we eat and drink these days have some type of chemical residue in it. Also if suppliers are selling foundation that can be harmful to man and getting away with it, someone isn't doing there job. IMHO. Jack